Interview with David Sønstebø

The World of Tomorrow

When futurologists talk about their vision, we can read their words, we can somehow fathom their ideas but it’s always hard to draw an image before our inner eye.
In this article, I’m trying to create my own image of what lays ahead 25 years from now.

Well, 25 years are not that much you may ask?
Think back. 1992. The Internet, “just a trend anyway” some said, was run with 4 terabytes a month -worldwide. We kiddos either used our time with Looping Louie or with our precious Tamagotchi. Nope, that was 1997. These were different times. No digitalism, no data-streams, no online gaming, no cell phone for everyone except Miami-Vice in his Cabriolet. No Whats app, hell it was even a pain in the ass to gather all our friends at the doorsteps which were one, five or ten streets away.
We played Ghosts n’ Goblins on the Commodore 64, single-player. Or Commander Keen.
We had a bike, a football, a doll and if grandma was generous a Game-boy with Tetris and Super Mario Land.
We jumped because Kriss Kross told us so, and if our crush didn’t want to meet us, we heard November Rain. And at this point, I feel pretty old and analog.

Today, we have Blogs, we trade crypto-currency, and we get creepy ad recommendations into our browser to buy a virtual reality headset to slay some 3D mummified bear sharks, because we googled it to buy it on Amazon.

Today, we tinder to have sex with a housewife “just 3 miles from here!”

The last sentence alone would be enough to trigger a stroke or two in 1992.

But here we are. We live in a totally digital world. One geomagnetic storm from the sun could be enough to kill our economy, if our Internet provider has maintenance, we get bored in a second. We want to be wired. Weird.

25 years from now would be the same “mind-clusterfuck” for us now like 2017 would be for people from 1992.

“Smells like teens spirit” from 1992 could be considered an oldie, even Skrillex. Agony.

People won’t have a cellphone, but a communication chip, implanted in their shoulder.

On this chip, enough data space to store the history of mankind of the last 3000 years.

People can hear music, paid per view, paid per seconds you listened, activated with colored Logitech buttons within their vision, comparable to a digital head-up display. Your arm is your mouse.

Time will be shown on your skin, with ferrofluid, formed as numbers with an electromagnet, powered by body heat.

It is uncommon to buy software in 2042. Software is provided. If you want to use it, use nano-payments for the time you enjoy its service.

Electric cars don’t need to have parking tickets. They drive autonomously through the gates and pay the amounts you need for them to stay, at the end of the visit.

We won’t use paper, except for, well some things can’t be done digitally. Hygiene is conservative.

The water you use instead will be paid without you even noticing. Also groceries, medicine and porn.

You have an automated calculation for your bills. If you ever be short of money, you will be reminded 6 months before you run out of crypto. You don’t even have to think about cash, everything is online, automated, done behind closed algorithms.

At this point, let’s not talk about the development of housewives in your neighborhood.

Instead: Marriage contracts. They will be saved within a crypto-currency. People will get a certificate and celebrate their unique hash of love.
Uhhh, the hash starts with 4444! Fortune for the family. Good times ahead.

25 years from now, we need to be wired. We will depend on connections. And we won’t pay for it. Neither for connections nor for shifting values.

In our very future, we have some greater things to do than paying for payment.

We still have these annoying Facebook friends we don’t really know, but constantly get Candy Crush invites from.

In the future, it is called Holo-book though, and these damn 3D-diamonds are crushing through your roof. The sensor data of the IoT managed to find out where you are, in what state of sleep you are and which color you like the most. People pay advertisements based on this data, available because the Tangle saved the information.

If we are unlucky, then Justin Bieber is running for Presidency in 2042. Since 2017, this kind of scenario isn’t made by Stephen King anymore as we all know.

Humanity has a lot of construction sites in 2042 besides Holo-book.

The climate-change won’t be a boring subject in school, but ever-repeating hurricanes in 6 months a year.

Sequencing DNA to save people from countless diseases will be accomplished with a tangle-based “world-computer”. All for one, one for all. Progress.

If you ask me, 2042 will be hard to grasp. But damn, I’m really curious what lies ahead.

@TechCrunch Would love that for the cryptospace, together with a standard they had to accept like using primary sources, commentaries have to be marked as such and conflicts of interests should be marked at the beginning of an article. Crypto desperately needs a standard. #iota #btc #eth